Friday, May 16, 2014

Anno Mundi

Anno Mundi, dating systems of Orthodox Christians and Jews, means "year of the world," and begins when the very widely
disputed biblical year of creation occurred. It was much earlier for early
Christians and Jews that use the Septuagint than Bishop Ussher’s 17th c. calculation
that is, I believe, identical to the current Jewish Masoretic calculation, of
October 7 3,761 BCE. The
Septuagint date for creation that the Byzantine Empire used after revising the
still-relevant Chronicon Paschale is 31
Aug to 1 Sept 5508 BCE (the
Chronicon Pascale began March 21 5507 BCE,
which itself replaced the Alexandrian Calendar, which began March 25, 5493 BCE). The Byzantine and later Roman year, including
the indictional (fiscal) sequence of Justinian, began Sept. 1, not January 1 (as
in the Julian calendar and later Gregorian Calendar that we use today), or the
Sidereal-lunar calendars that began on either March 21 or 25th.

The Chronicon
Paschale was the basis of the computuus used to calculate the movable feasts
using lunar cycles, and incorporates a fixed date representing an the Spring
equinox; in actuality, the equinox was calculated uniquely for each year, as
the equinox was recognized to drift. September 1 was the usual fiscal year
practiced during the medieval period in England and in most of the European and
Mediterranean world - anybody who had been influenced by at least the
Alexandrian period of Roman rule, which originally was a five year period
beginning in Roman Alexandria 287 CE, as a cycle of land and agricultural tax reassessment,
establishes its initial year as 297/8 CE according to a Coptic document dating
to 933 CE , and became a 15 year period by 314 CE, with the ca. 633 CE Chronicon
Paschale establishing an initial date of September 312/313 CE, since
Constantine had triumphed during the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, defeating
the usurper Maxentius, after having ordered his troops to inscribe 'in hoc
signo vinces' and the XP monogram (chi-rho:
the Christogram) on their standards and shields.

297 CE was the year of completion of Diocletian's
sweeping empire-wide fiscal reform, following the monetary reform that began in
293, with mint reforms occurring until 296, when the Greek-derived drachm
system was replaced by the Pan-Roman currency system, as were all provincial
currency systems. Local civic mints were closed and large-scale regional mints
were then opened and their monetary production exponentially increased to
re-supply the provinces with their small change. Census were ordered to be
conducted on a 5-15 year bases as well, and I assume that these were most
likely to occur directly preceding the indictional revisions, where one
indiction was equivalent half of the
period of average life expectancy. For the purview of government, all calendar
and period-cycle codification revolved around taxation and optimal strategies
to control inflation and influx of foreign currency, and to control military
allegiance with proper allotment of currency in order to protect farmland and
infrastructure. Tax adjustment and the census were concomitant, since growth
and costs changed only semi-covariantly, although these were correlated. Force
was used to impose fiat cultural and social values, which included the
circulation of currency, bearing the emblems and current messages from the
state.

Rome had elevated money (its common
thread, as no central religion dominated) to the status of a sacred fetish, Sacra
Moneta, and who was personified by the abstract feminine deity Moneta. The name
Moneta also referred to the derived cognate form of Mnemosyne, the Greek
goddess of memory (and mother of the Muses) – and from the Latin word monere,
which means “to remind, warn, or instruct” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moneta. More appropriately
though, Juno Moneta engendered Sacra Moneta: she was the figurative mother of
figurative money – and the term moneta then etymologically descended by way of
the Greek word μονήρης, (‘moneres,’ meaning “unique, alone”); Juno
Moneta was the protector of finances, whose temples WERE the mints, and as such
sacrosanct places as well. The implication is that money was the unique memory
of the State, as well as the mother of arts, literature, sciences, and to all
forms of creative and constructive exploits – a “reminder,” and “alone” among
all other media and things. Money was already functioning as
proto-archaeological/proto-paleographical evidence.

Coin collecting, probably as a component of a
collection of art and documents required as references for international
political functionality was also practiced by Augustus, and I assume that this
was pragmatic, as the coinage of Greek predecessors often had dates, and these
Ptolemaic and Seleucid coins had become objects for collection, and were likely
seen as tokens of cultural expansion that could be interpreted by Romans to
suffice for evidence of legitimate control over a region linked this way to
precursory Greek kingdoms that had become controlled by Rome. Money alone
survives in the sediments, when no other chronology can be constructed, as
structures and texts are destroyed easily and commonly. When the decision to
debase coinage was made, reference specimens from competitive foreign currency
systems must have been accumulated in order to avoid triggering economic panic beginning
in ports.

Interestingly, this posthumous coin http://wildwinds.com/coins/ric/constantine/_alexandria_RIC_viii_012.jpgcommemorates the deification of Constantine –
and AFTER his official conversion to Christianity, by his Christian son
Constantine II, in 337-340 CE (although before Christianity became the official
imperial religion), an example of one of the four types, having the veiled head
of the emperor Constantine I on its obverse, and the emperor riding in a fast
quadriga with the very Christian motif of a hand of God reaching for him, was
also struck in Alexandria (and also atmany other mints), and has the mintmark of SMAL_A.